Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[3ureka]

Not sure if this needs its own thread or not, but I'll just post it here to begin with.

Has the idea of getting rid of the timer tied with GL stacks ever been considered? Several jobs have resources that don’t expire: MCH’s Heat and Battery; SAM’s Kenki, Sen, and Meditation Stacks; Ninja’s Ninki and Mudra; DRK’s Blackblood and proc from breaking TBN; GNB’s Cartridges; WAR’s Beast Gauge; etc. Admittedly, the latter mentions are tanks, but I have a point that I’ll get to shortly.

In the case of SAM, I think it’d be hard to argue that buff expiration is an issue for them, seeing how once you apply Jinpu and Shifu in an engagement, they will likely be refreshed without any worry (that’s a little subjective, but what’s *ob*jective about it is that both of those buffs are 40 seconds… more than double the duration of GL). Best case scenario you can get both of these buffs up in 2 GCDs (via an inefficient use of Meikyo); worst case, you have to go through 6.

If you Form Shift (we’ll come back to this in a second) to Coeurl form before an engagement, best case scenario: you use PB and can hit GL4 in 4 GCDs; in the absolute worst case… (and this is considering you didn’t pre Form Shift or use PB) 12 GCDs to GL4. Also, reverting PB’s CD back to 120s was a mistake (at the very least make it 90 to line up with RoF and BH).

On the topic of Form Shift, it’s only useful now because of how incoherent MNK’s design is. If we got rid of the timer on GL, there’d be no need to constantly be stomping to refresh the timer; yes, we’d lose the ability to enter Coeurl form pre-pull, but I think replacing Form Shift with some other weapon skill or oGCD would be worth the trade. Form Shift is also only ever useful during downtime or pre-pull. You wouldn’t ever use FS when you could instead use a damaging weapon skill. So many other jobs (like the ones mentioned above) have skills to instantly generate resource at the press of a button with the only caveat that they be in combat (this is where I wanted to reference the tanks, esp GNB and WAR with Bloodfest and Infuriate respectively). Instead MNKs have a way to expend our most precious resource. Tornado Kick is an awesome skill and I love how often I get to use it! (:

Out of the classes I’ve played, I think DRG shares the most pain points with MNK in that they have no way to rapidly get into Life of the Dragon and are strictly gated by the cool down of High Jump. I don’t know how SE handles how they approach each job’s design, but you would think that for DoW/M jobs, they’d keep the combat experience first and foremost in their minds. Maybe they’re balancing around Dungeon/raid content, in which case keeping up buffs is a little easier because you’re in combat; but for overworld stuff, it’s almost painful to attempt anything as MNK or DRG.

[SpeckledBurd]

-Snip characters-

The problem with that is that all of the jobs you mention, who have longer duration buffs that basically don't fall off due to their duration, have other systems in place that give them engaging gameplay rather than just upkeeping a buff or two. The Sen/Iaijutsu and Kenki on Samurai are the primary parts that inform Samurai's gameplay, while Shifu and Jinpu contribute toward the Sens in particular (and also provide speed and round out the flow of its skills). Ninja is the same way, it has Huton as a buff to maintain, but its actual gameplay is informed by it's Mudras, Ninki, and the rest of its oGCDs.

Dragoon is a decent comparison to Monk in terms of gameplay but I don't think they share a lot of pains, rather I'd say that Dragoon is an example of how a buff similar to Greased Lightning was built upon in an intelligent and satisfying manner. It's Blood of the Dragon, not Life of the Dragon that's the equivalent to Greased Lightning, while Life of the Dragon is something that Monk lacks that it could sorely use. Both Blood of the Dragon and Greased Lightning are similar in that they're buffs you are incentivized to keep up at all times to do decent damage, Monk through buffing all actions, Dragoon through extended Combos and buffed Jumps. Life of the Dragon however is a reward for proper upkeep of that buff (it's most direct equivalent is actually Foul/Xenoglossy to that end), but that's something Monk just doesn't have at all. So while it is a slower build, it's a slower build for a good reason and it neatly punctuates it's buff and ties into the jobs identity (Spear Knights that Jump on things).

Monk has neither of these things. Other than Greased Lightning, it has forms which only allows its combos to flow differently which after you learn it isn't much more engaging than the standard combo progression of others jobs. It doesn't have an adjacent system you have to work Greased Lightning around in the way that Ninja and Samurai have on top of their own buffs. Nor does it have some reward for upkeeping its buff, in Monks case the buff is the end rather than a means to a greater end like Enochian and BoTD have evolved into. And on top of that they've trimmed so much out of the job from expansion to expansion with the vast majority of additions being either Greased Lightning upkeep (that was bad and we no longer need now that we have a skill that just works) or worse replacements to what we lost, that there's nothing satisfying to us at the moment.

A while ago there was a suggestion I saw to the effect of giving Monk something similar to Sabin's Blitz's from FFVI which would be cool, but probably wouldn't happen outside of an expansion dropping so it's unlikely to happen any time soon when there's need for change right now. At the moment however the job is pretty much primed for the latter, when have Six Sided Star and Tornado Kick both of which are woefully underutilized in our kit (seeing 1 use total in a fight pretty frequently, which is the exact reason they changed Shoha on Samurai). It doesn't solve the problem of Anatman existing when it literally never should have to begin with, or the Fist stances never having the problem they've had since 2.0 fixed while they continue to soak up trait slots making them utterly worthless at the same time, but like the 5.05 changes it would be a step towards something better.

But without Greased Lightning, Monk loses it's identity in this game. That is what defines Monk for better or worse, and I think without it Monk would be even more boring than it is now.

[3ureka]

The problem with that is…

Ahh. In that case, Monks should be further rewarded to keep up their GL stacks outside of the bonuses from each stack, right? Or to borrow your words, they need a system of engagement in place? Maybe to take a page out of SAM’s book, we could grant buffs similar to Leaden Fist from executing other weapon skills. To really lean into the forms, they could have a “continuation” of Leaden Fist so that if you land it with the correct positional, you get increased potency (or some other effect) for doing the next positional correctly and so on; e.g. upon a successful Leaden Fist, you get Leaden Kick which would buff your next Raptor weapon skill like extend the duration of Twin Snakes (in prep for a PB usage) or a potency boost to True Strike (incentive to hit Twin > True > True within RoF & BH).

Dragoon is a decent comparison to Monk in terms of gameplay but I don't think they share a lot of pains...

Yeah, you’re right about both GL being more analogous to Blood of the Dragon and how it’s more of an end than a means. While the proposal above doesn’t necessarily eliminate how GL is more of a means, I think locking certain skills behind max stacks of GL might help alleviate that issue. On the topic of BLM’s Enochian(?), someone on The Balance proposed giving a free cast of TK if you can keep max stacks of GL for 30 seconds (or so). I think that’s a great idea and seems like an easy solution to just tack on to the current iteration of TK.

Monk has neither of these things…

Ahh. Had to look up the Sabin reference. While I think that’d be really cool (was a big fan of pad games, so combo inputs is right up my alley), I fear that the implementation would be too a bit difficult; one way I could see it working is if they attached a “combo input” to a weapon skill based on the positional (would definitely throw off all the muscle memory, though). SSS is certainly underwhelming, although I’ve lately been a little more appreciative of its niche use cases; still, the infrequency of use is painful, and I’d rather see it be incorporated into our regular rotation (same can be said about Anatman). As for TK… it was a mistake haha. Unless they can give us a free cast of it somehow, I don’t see how we’ll ever use this skill outside of a long disconnect or kill.

I think this may have been lightly touched on or buried earlier in the thread, but what if they turned each Fist stance into an amalgamation of Lance Charge and Kaiten? That is, each becomes an oGCD that buffs the next weapon skill with a different effect; e.g. FoF makes the next weapon skill hit 10% harder, FoW grants 1 (or 2?) stack of chakra, FoE grants ??? This plus make GL4 a trait. I’m not particularly attached to the Fist Stances, but I imagine reusing assets to focus on a more cohesive kit seems like a better use of the developers’ time.